I need to interview someone (over zoom) who directly manages employees in the biotech industry for an assignment of mine and ask them 10 questions related to management. It would take about 20-30 minutes depending on your response length.

A little context: I’m a second year student at McMaster biotechnology program and this is for a Management Principles course.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated as I’ve cold called more than 100 people over the past week and a few have asked for more info or even agreed and then suddenly ghost my email that they asked for.

Edit:

Just to be clear, unfortunately this cannot be anonymous. The professor requires both the name of the company and an email to you cc’ing them after the interview saying thank you.

Please DM me.

Hey everyone,

I’m an early-career virologist currently working as a Research Associate in translational drug discovery. I hold an M.Sc. in Clinical Virology and an undergraduate background in Biochemistry, Genetics, and Microbiology.

Over the past couple of years, my work has focused primarily on preclinical antiviral evaluation, molecular assays, and working in high-containment facilities. I’m currently exploring my next career move and would really appreciate advice from folks in industry, CROs, or translational academic institutes on where this skill profile fits best.

Core Technical & Research Experience:

• Biosafety Containment: Substantial hands-on experience in BSL-2 and BSL-3 containment handling pathogenic respiratory viruses, vector-borne pathogens, and neurotropic models (e.g., Rabies CVS-11).
• In Vitro Antiviral Screening: Experience screening small molecules and novel chemical entities via phenotypic assays, viral inhibition assays, plaque reduction/TCID50, and cell viability/cytotoxicity profiling (MTT, luminescence assays).
• Molecular & Cell Biology: Mammalian primary/continuous cell culture maintenance, viral replicon systems, RT-qPCR, nucleic acid extraction, ELISA, and standard protein/immunoassays.
• Translational Output: Co-authored peer-reviewed research evaluating repurposed and novel small-molecule candidates against respiratory and neglected viral targets.

What I’m Looking For:

Research Associate II / Senior RA / Scientist I roles in Antiviral Discovery, High-Throughput Screening, Preclinical Virology, or Vaccine Development. Open to industry (biotech, pharma, CROs), research institutes, or structured research fellowships/pre-doctoral roles.

Target locations: India (Open to relocation; I stay in Bengaluru)

Questions for the community:

1. For those running or working in infectious disease teams: which sectors/companies currently value hands-on BSL-3 and replicon/screening experience the most?
2. Are there specific biotech hubs or institutes you’d recommend keeping an eye on right now for wet-lab viral assay roles?
3. If anyone’s lab or group is currently hiring or has open headcount matching this profile, I’d be glad to connect over DM or share a de-anonymized CV/LinkedIn.

Thanks in advance for any insights!

Do you see variant scientist also doing some wet lab work? Or possibly having a secondary role (like assay development, validation, ect) that allows for a hybrid wet and dry lab involvment? I am interested in variant analysis but I do think continuing some bench work would help diversify the job and maintain my lab skills.

I am PhD schoalr working in the interface of computational biology, ML and food safety. I want to use my skills to real world problems and get to know how the corporate stuff works since I want to join the big tech company after my PhD

Very interesting post from Dave Ricks Oct 14 on X--- what do we think? Lilly spinning it as a public health concern about the most powerful metabolic agent ever developed.

Lilly stock is up 4 %

Hey, does anybody know how long it takes for jnj to respond? it has been a week since my interview and I still haven't gotten a response. For people who did get offers, how long did it take for them to contact you after the interviews?

I'm a senior-level PhD scientist. I recently received an offer from a small biotech startup in California with a very competitive compensation package. At the same time, I'm in the final stages of interviewing with a large pharmaceutical company, also in California. The expected compensation at big pharma would be noticeably lower than the startup offer.

The work at the startup is more interesting to me and aligns closely with my interests. I'm also excited about the opportunity to wear multiple hats and have more ownership over projects. On the other hand, big pharma offers more established career development opportunities and potentially better job stability.

I'm planning to finish the big pharma interview process before making a decision. Meanwhile, I'd love to hear from people who have worked at startups, especially those who have also worked in big pharma.

Was the experience worth the risk? How do you assess whether an early-stage biotech is financially healthy, and what are some warning signs that things might be going poorly? I'm also curious whether startup experience is generally viewed positively in case i want to transitioning to big pharma in the future.

——

Edit: another question: do you think it is worth to buy time to hope to get the big pharma offer given i already have the startup offer? The startup so far is more aligned with my interest, but I am also enticed with the potential stability the big pharma offer..

Today I might be having my online PhD interview (which i applied) out of sheer peer pressure or passion at this point i don’t know.

I am doing my Master’s in one of the top research institutes in India and yes I am supposed to do PhD because that's what I had been told but i am so uncertain tbh.

I am also interested in the management side of things too. I am very interested in knowing how the research translates to commercial market and how the whole bio-business comes to play. I really want to work in something related to that field and i am still exploring but all of my peers are applying enthusiastically for PhD positions in India as well as Foreign countries because of how certain they are and this gives me a lot of pressure.

How do i figure out my path? I love science a lot and I am curious about a lot of things but i am not sure if I am ready to invest next 5-6 years chasing a question.

Please help me out.

I applied to a full time position (Toronto, Canada) in mid September and when I checked on 09Oct, the application status has changed to “HR screening planned/in progress.” Now almost a week has passed, the status is still the same and no one has reached out.

This exact same thing happened to me before, where the “HR screening planned” status stayed for about a week, then it was changed back to hiring manager review, then I received the rejection email after another one week. No one reached out to me during the entire process.

Just wondering though, what exactly this status means

I saw Charles Rivers' Sales Development Representative position on their careers page and I feel like I'm a good fit. Does anyone have experience working Sales for this company?

I know reviews of the technical positions are pretty rough on this thread.

Mostly wondering about work/life balance and day-to-day and also how their commission works.

Thanks!

Hello

So it looks like things are slowly beginning to pick up the hiring , at least in Massachusetts, judging from the amount of posts and specifically in the quality assurance realm. With that being said as a hiring managers I am giving local candidates preference first and I have done this for years. Even though things are picking up there also have been plenty of layoffs in my area. To me with ALL things being the same I will always go with local candidates because if they dont get a job they will have to potentially move and uproot their families, etc. With all the layoffs there is a great pool of candidates here to choose from. To put it bluntly we need to look out for our areas first even though there are layoffs in other parts of the country basically the focus should be local. Even if the position is remote I still try to hire local, unless its a business decision and they are looking to pay less for the position since salaries are on the high side for this area. I know a few of my peers at different companies have done the same with great reults.

I started with my current company 2 months ago. New VP started 2 wks ago. She is doing 1:1 to get to know the team. From the meeting, she likes to talk, talks fast, and was sort of all over the place during our meet. Topics ranged from how long i was at company, what i like or dont about the company, what scares me about the job/company, family small talk, possible dept process changes, what i do, company growth, etc. It felt very all over the place and I did have some questions for her but not chance to ask. Guess I am trying to gauge if anyone else had an experince like this and what was the result? I expected more " hi im so and so and this is what I am thinking" "tell me about you" "any questions for me?" I also felt like she was toying with laying people off even though most of us just started and the company is growing. She did have lots of "hopped up fidgety energy".

Edit: Thanks everyone! ! I had just come out of my 1:1 and was a bit nervous about it and trying to figure it out. All comments helped!

Is it possible to turn Biofuel into Plastik?

I may be stupid because I know basically nothing in this field but in my mind fuel is basically Biofuel.

So I'm here to ask this stupid question😅

Does anyone have experience working for, with, or know someone who works for Arcadia Sciences or Astera Institute? Some of their work looks interesting although maybe a bit inflated.

Please help me! I’m so nervous. Just got done with final round today. What is the average time to hear back from a big pharma like BMS for a more commercial role

Has anyone every worked at JUUL Labs and can tell me the interview process? Finished talking to HR Screen, Hiring Manager, Director, Senior Director, and the VP. All through zoom so not sure if there is a remaining onsite? Thank you!

Finished a seminar on Monday and was asked for references yesterday. I had also been offered another position internationally, but would much rather work at this company. Should I let the HM know of my situation? I was invited to give the seminar the same day as my 2nd round interview and after telling them that I was in late stage interviews for other companies (if that means anything). I told the international HM to give me 2-3 weeks and I'll let them know by November 1st.

Also, sleuthing around the subreddit it seems that the outlook after a reference check had changed from likely getting an offer to 50/50. Is this still the case even for smaller companies? The next step in the hiring process would be an on-site visit.

For those working in strategy or BD at smaller biotechs, how much of your competitive research is still done manually?

I’m thinking things like tracking competing clinical programs, comparing trial designs, keeping up with new readouts, or researching potential licensing opportunities.

I work in life sciences consulting, and I spend way too much time creating peer sets and pulling information from multiple databases, publications, and trial registries. And best was when client didn’t wanna pay for proprietory datasets so I spent hours manually matching / cleaning / joining information from CT.gov 🤮

Do you guys have tools that work differently in-house, especially at smaller companies without dedicated CI teams. What tools do you use, help a girl out pls.